Transport Phenomenon of Simultaneously Developing Flow and Heat Transfer in Twisted Sinusoidal Wavy Microchannel under Pulsating Inlet Flow Condition

Abstract

The transport phenomena in microchannel are significant in designing MEMS devices. The current study investigates numerically the simultaneously developing unsteady laminar flow and heat transfer inside a twisted sinusoidal wavy microchannel. At the inlet sinusoidal varying velocity component is applied. Varying pulsating amplitude and frequency represented by the Strouhal number was studied for Reynolds numbers ranging from 1 to 100. The governing equations are solved with a finite volume based numerical method. In comparison with steady flow, it was found that imposed sinusoidal velocity at the inlet can provide improved heat transfer performance at different amplitudes and frequencies while keeping the pressure drop within acceptable limits.